Yesterday afternoon, I (Amy) noticed that our kitchen was smelling of gas and that we had no hot water. "No problem", I thought, "I'll just call the gas company". When I reached the service rep, she told me to call a plumber... I don't know much about these things, but I do know that smelling gas is BAD and that a plumber will not fix it!! So, I called Matt and he came home from work to rescue me! He got on the phone with another service rep who told him to turn the nobs on top of the tank and that they'd send someone out to fix the leak. In his work clothes, Matt climbed through the sticker bushes to our tanks only to realize that bees had infested the lids... If you know Matt, you know that he has but few loves in life, including me, Hula, running, and killing bees. His usual weapon-of-choice (a hose) was not available to he improvised :) We had a fun afternoon in the yard!

Matt with his fire-wood gloves, getting ready to open the top of the tank. Hula and I are hiding in the car :)

Gloves and a shovel... I guess the shovel was for open the lid to get to the knob.

Matt decided to still use water, even though he didn't have a hose. He started with a measuring cup of water and gradually made his way up to several bucket-fulls of water.

Run, Matt, run!! He successfully dumped water, hopped over the rake, and ran back to the car without getting stung once :)

So how did our gas leak end up?? We called the company for hours and hours to come fix the leak... we finally gave up since the after-hours costs are so high. We figured we'd just pack up and take Hula to a hotel. However, after it was past dark, a service rep returned our call and said that a gas leak is a serious emergency and that would have to come out to inspect it. Finally, someone took action!! He arrived shortly after and it seems that we ran out of gas. Oops. He was kind and refilled us. I called the company today to get on an automatic fill and we already have one on our tanks, so they goofed!